Posted
by
msmash
on Thursday April 28, 2016 @01:10PM
from the bitcoin-refuses-to-die dept.

An anonymous reader shares an article on Fortune Magazine: The popular Steam computer game network has started accepting bitcoin in a move aimed at making it easier for players in countries like Brazil and China to make payments. Bitcoin transactions will be integrated into game shopping from Steam, which is owned by Valve Software and claims over 100 million users worldwide. Users will be able to use any bitcoin wallet to scan and pay for games or other items without revealing sensitive financial information via software from Bitpay.

Technology has always been abused for evil, from the time the first club was made to make hunting bears possible and Urk found out that it could be used to bash in Kruk's head. By your logic the invention of gunpowder, explosives, carpet knives and airplanes was evil because without, 9/11 could not have happened.

There are over 400 free-to-play games available on Steam (including DOTA 2 and Team Fortress 2). It's not hard to imagine that some portion of users who are unable to acquire a credit card (or unwilling to trust Valve with credit card information) and are currently only playing F2P games would expand their Steam library to include paid titles using bitcoin.

"The difference between you and me is that I read these claims with a degree of skepticism, while you swallowed them whole."

No, the difference between you and me is that I don't insert strawmen into an argument. The situation you tried to claim was easier (paying with a credit card) is not the situation they were trying to address. I pointed that out, and now you're trying to back-pedal.

Steam is accepting Bitcoin, so apparently they thought it would be beneficial in addition to their current payment opt

Maybe this will turn out to do nothing for Valve's bottom line, but I feel relatively safe making the assumption that Valve had some amount of data which would suggest this can increase sales. Or, maybe some people at Valve are just fans of cryptocurrency and had enough clout to get Steam to support it. Either way, it means nothing to me since I neither use cryptocurrency nor intend to do so in the foreseeable future. All of this leads t

The point is that MORE users will be able to buy Steam games now. I think it's interesting that Bitcoin is somehow the best way to make this happen, but it doesn't seem out of line. Certainly, Bitcoins are suited about as well as they can be for buying Steam stuff. Bitcoin suffers from a bunch of problems that don't really hit this type of purchase.

"And with the way Bitcoin works now, one can easily scam Steam out of a sale, play the game and beat it in a couple of days, reverse the transaction, get banned, repeat with new account and wallet, and Steam will never be able to stop them."
The reversing of transactions is only possible for zero-confirmation transactions. That's ~10 minutes you have to beat the game, not a couple days.

I'd be interested in how Valve's return policy is going to work with Bitcoin. Will it be based on the value of bitcoin at the time of purchase, or the value of bitcoin at the time of the refund? You can sit on a game for up to 14 days and get a refund for it, as long as you don't play it for over 2 hours during that time. Cryptocurrencies have fluctuated great deals in that period of time before.
If they decide to refund the Bitcoin amount of the purchase, then people could use this as a short-term inve

Yah know what, you're actually right. I was thinking of the normal "race to the goal" zero confirmation attack, but you could theoretically stretch it a bit. I apologize.
However, it's pretty easy to detect if someone is attempting this longer time period attack, and the payment processors should be able to incorporate that logic fairly simply. The ones that don't will almost certainly be out of business quickly.

" However, it's pretty easy to detect if someone is attempting this longer time period attack,"

Not really. The current state of bitcoin is such that detecting this among people not paying the speedy transaction fee is next to impossible. Keep the blockchain busy enough and you're able to stretch this out a couple of weeks or more.

Well, I hate to break this to you, but Steam isn't accepting your "actual money", either.

Your bank will provide a service (for a fee) of taking your "actual money" and provides another service (for a fee) of turning that money into an electronic ledger entry that Paypal (or Mastercard or Visa) accept and then they will provide yet another another service (for another fee) of taking that electronic ledger entry, and giving it to Valve.

Cash for internet purchases virtually never happens. One or more intermed

The point being made is that valve only accepts state-issued currency denominations,

That's a direct contradiction of the article. Are you saying that if I go to the Steam website, there won't be a payment method that says bitcoin?That's my standard for "accepting bitcoin". Just like having a Visa payment method on the website would be my standard for "accepting Visa". Valve doesn't actually process anything, they leave that to a third party. Sometimes the merchants don't even get your credit card detail

A fee of 1%, which is half or less of what a traditional credit card fee charges. Steam/Valve don't accept Credit Cards either. Visa, Mastercard, Maestro, etc will provide a service (for a fee) of turning your credit card number into the actual money that Valve demands.

What's your point? All currency exchange is just agreed upon IOU's for goods or services. This is just one more that opens up new markets to them as well as decreases processing fees for them if existing customers jump on it.

Better tell that to Steam [steampowered.com]. They've sold me a couple dozen games while not accepting my Discover card, and their client software even stores the rejected card information for subsequent purchases despite their refusal to to accept it.

What goes on is conceptually same with paying with Norwegian krone, except that I do not have to keep Bitcoin in a custodial service in order to pay online.

Whether they want to keep some krone or bitcoin around is a matter of accounting. Valve probably doesn't have operational costs they can pay with Bitcoin, but other firms might (hosting, domain registration and whatnot).